The eight o’clock bell had already rung, but Anton stood on the footbridge anyway, watching the dark water. The bridge was off-limits during school hours, but nobody was around to see him now, and Anton liked the feeling he got, leaning over the bridge, and so he stood there, waiting. It was cold, and getting colder, but there was no ice on the stream yet. There would be ice on the way home though.
A boy in the lower school had drowned in the stream a year ago; that was why the bridge was off-limits. Anton watched a patch of leaves pull away from the bank and eddy out into the middle of the stream. He squinted, turning the leaves into a brown jacket, his own, floating toward him as he stood above, watching. There was a small rock directly beneath where he stood. If he could make the leaves float toward the rock, touch it, he would have the picture of his own dead body, facedown, floating there beneath him. Drowned. He concentrated hard, willing the patch of leaves to drift toward him. But the leaves caught for a moment against a branch and spun in a full circle, trailing behind them a dark green patch, slimy, changing the shape of everything. Then suddenly, for no reason, the leaves broke free of the branch and came to rest against a rock. Anton smiled. Perfect. The back of his head was just visible above the water, the dark brown jacket moved in the stream, washed by it, softly, easily, and Anton inhaled the cold water deeply. Drowned. Dead.
He could not leave the bridge so long as his body lay there in the stream.
It was getting late. He always missed the eight o’clock bell, but he did not want to miss the 8:10 and the end of homeroom period. It was Friday, and if Mr. Hollister were to call him in again, it would be today. If he called him in, he would skip gym. If he called him in, he would get through the morning all right, and then maybe the afternoon. And then there would be the stones, and his mother, and all Saturday and Sunday with nothing to be afraid of.
Move, then, he wanted to say to the body beneath the bridge. At once the leaves broke away from the rock. Again Anton smiled. It was going to be a safe day.
In the corridor outside homeroom everything was silent. He peeked through the little glass window and saw Miss Kelly pacing up and down in front of the room. She was wearing her Friday sweater, green-blue and baggy, and she was mopping her nose with a tissue. She always had a cold.
The principal was making the morning announcements and his muffled voice came in little spurts through the heavy door: PTA, cheerleading, speech club. Anton opened his locker and put away all his books except American history; he would need that for first period. He hung up his coat, his cap, his scarf. He looked both ways for a moment and then quickly, in a single hurried motion, he took off his face and hung it on the side hook, so that only his profile showed. And then he slammed the locker door, ready, as the 8:10 bell rang for first period.
“You’re late, Anton,” Miss Kelly said at the classroom door. “Go to the office and get a pass. Oh, and here’s a note. Mr. Hollister wants to see you in the guidance office during your first free period. So please don’t be late for him. You’re always late, Anton. I don’t know why that has to be.” Miss Kelly hugged herself in her green-blue sweater. “Can you tell me why that has to be? That you’re always late?”
Anton said nothing.
“Well, I’ve had a little talk with Mr. Hollister about you. I’ve told him you’re doing very well in English, your written work, but you don’t talk enough. You don’t contribute. Don’t you think you could contribute more?”
Students had begun to drift in for Miss Kelly’s English class and some of them were listening, Anton knew.
“We both like you, Anton. Mr. Hollister and I, both. I want you to understand that. We’re just concerned about you. You’re just so…”
But Anton was not listening to her. He was listening to the fat girl in the front row, who was saying to her girlfriend, “We’re concerned about you, Anton. We love you, Anton. We adore you. Oh, Anton!”
“Very well,” Miss Kelly said, seeing that he was not listening to her, seeing his face redden. “Please see Mr. Hollister during study. And please be on time.”
Brisk now, all business, she said to the class, “All right, people, please settle down. We are still on Chaucer and it is already December and we are a full century behind.”
Miss Kelly was in love with Mr. Hollister, Anton knew, and he knew too that Mr. Hollister would never return her love. Mr. Hollister loved him.
He got through American history and algebra and art without having to say anything. As always, he knew the answers, but he kept silent even when he was called on. He preferred that the others think him stupid and just ignore him. He didn’t want them to look at him or talk to him or even talk about him. He wanted not to exist. Or to be invisible. To escape. So he waited.
Even in art class he waited. Art was an elective and Miss Belekis had seen at once that he had a real gift for draftsmanship, so she had loaned him books on anatomy and told him to draw whatever he wanted. She had praised his first drawings—fat peasant women knitting or praying or peeling apples, imitative stuff—and he had liked her praise, but he saw the danger of being noticed. And so for Miss Belekis he drew the same peasant women again and again, trying to make the drawings seem less finished each time, trying to conceal his growing mastery of craft. After a while, he just gave her the same old drawings. She stopped commenting, but she continued to loan him the books.
Years later, as a famous sculptor working in marble and stone, he would remain just as secretive, a mystery to his agent and the galleries where he showed. He was a recluse. He saw almost nobody. And though he always sculpted from life and, in time, went through three wives and a mistress, he claimed he just didn’t like people. He merely sculpted them from stone.
But now, in high school, he had no choice. He was forced to see people. Still, he could keep them from seeing him. And so, though he continued to take home the books that Miss Belekis loaned him, he showed her only the same old pictures of peasant women. Meanwhile, at nights and on weekends, he made good progress with the human figure, drawing it over and over in every imaginable posture, and always nude. This did not embarrass him. This was art, and it had nothing to do with life.
In life, he was terrified at the idea of a nude body. This was why he cut gym class repeatedly. All the boys taking off their clothes in front of one another, looking, some of them even wanting to be looked at. And Coach Landry encouraging it all. It made him want to run and hide. And they looked at him, too.
Only last night he had been drying himself after his shower when he noticed a few dark brown hairs, down there, and he realized he would never be safe again. He squatted on the bath mat and covered himself with both hands, squeezing tight, and praying, “Oh no, God, please don’t let me get big there, and have hair that shows, and be like the others. Please don’t let me ever be a man.” But even as he prayed, he knew it was hopeless. He took his hands away and the dark hairs were still there. It would happen to him, too. Nothing would stop it. Not prayer. Not anything.
“Anton, my friend. Come right in,” Mr. Hollister said. “Have a seat. Go on, sit down. Now, tell me. How are things going? Things going okay?”
“Yes.” Anton looked down. Mr. Hollister was wearing his red turtleneck. His blond hair was long and floppy. He crossed his legs wrong.
“Good. Good. So how are you doing? Oh, well, we’ve done that, haven’t we. What I really mean, Anton, is that as your guidance counselor, I’m concerned about you. I mean, you’re a really bright young man, but you’re always late for everything, and your teachers say you don’t contribute in class, and, gosh, I’ve noticed myself that you’re, well, you’re… let’s say independent. Some might say a loner. Some might even say antisocial. But I understand that. I do. I was a private kid myself. Like you, in a way. You know?”
Anton looked up at him and resolved to tell him nothing. He would break in. He would destroy. “You’re thin, Anton. Do you eat enough? I mean, do you have a good appetite?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. Well, frankly, what I really want to ask about, express my concern about is… the bruises. The cuts on your hands, your face sometimes, that broken wrist you had. I mean, Anton, how do you have so many accidents, for instance? I wonder if you could tell me about that.”
“I’m clumsy. I’m not careful.”
“Well, Anton, I was wondering about your folks. Your mom and dad. Do you get along with them okay? I mean, they never hit you or anything, do they?”
“No.”
“I mean, those bruises aren’t from them. Your father doesn’t hit you or anything? Even once in a while? You could tell me, you know. I could make sure he’d never hurt you again.”
“No.”
“No, of course not. We just have to check, you know. And your mother, neither? No?”
“They never hit me.”
“Well, let’s see. I know quite a lot about you,” Mr. Hollister said, and flipped open a manila folder on his desk. “We know quite a lot about each other, I mean.” He leafed through several sheets of paper.
What he knew was that Anton was fourteen, an only child, male. He was born an American citizen, of Russian and German parents. His father was a translator of Slavic literature. His mother was a housewife. They had lived in this small Massachusetts town for less than a year. What he knew was that Anton was alone.
“Don’t we,” Mr. Hollister said.
“Don’t we what?”
“We know quite a lot about each other, I mean.”
Anton waited for a moment and then looked him full in the eyes. “Yes,” he said.
Mr. Hollister cleared his throat and uncrossed his legs and looked again at the sheets of paper in the folder. Slowly his face began to color. When he raised his eyes, he found Anton still looking at him, waiting. He lowered them again.
“Well, any time you want to talk, Anton, you feel free to just come in here and see me.” His voice was different now. “I’m concerned about you, as you know; about all the kids. So you just come ahead anytime. Okay?”
“Thank you,” Anton said. He lowered his eyes finally, and then he stood up to go.
“Anytime,” Mr. Hollister said.
Mr. Hollister and Coach Landry were prefecting at the west end stairs when the crowd started down to the lunchroom. Seeing Anton approach, Mr. Hollister said, intending to be heard, “I’m concerned about that Anton fellow. He’s a fine young man, I think.” And Coach Landry, not intending to be heard, but heard nonetheless, said to him, “Just keep it in your pants, Hollister.”
Anton drifted with the crowd downstairs to the lunchroom, and then slowly, almost aimlessly, walked on past it and, once out of sight, moved quickly down the corridor to the gymnasium area and the boiler room. Nobody ever came here except to get to the gym.
Anton ate his lunch in a stall in the men’s room, or rather, he ate the apple, having thrown away the sandwich and the cake as soon as he had left home that morning. He was safe here. The walls and the cement floor were painted dark green and the massive stalls were made of oak and coated with many layers of varnish. There were no windows and only a single small bulb lit the room. It smelled like church. There was a new men’s room on the far side of the gym, with white walls and tan metal stalls and lots of light. The boys used that place all the time, but nobody ever came here. Anton sat on the high toilet in the abandoned men’s room and ate his apple.
So, it was almost over. And he had made it this far. Only two more classes. Tomorrow he would spend all day drawing. And Sunday too, if he wanted. He finished the apple and continued to sit there, his hands folded in his lap, waiting.
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. He was called on three times in French class and twice he gave the answer quickly, almost eagerly. The third time, though, he caught himself and pretended he didn’t know the answer.
He had slipped earlier today with Mr. Hollister, coming out from behind his school face to look at him, and he had almost done it again in French. He would have to be more careful. He could see Miss Pratt looking at him the way she looked at the others, encouraging him to risk an answer, right or wrong, enticing him out. He thought of his real face hanging downstairs in the green locker. When Miss Pratt called on him again, she would find he was not even there. The bell rang. Only one more class to go.
Miss Kelly was crazier than usual today. She kept sniffing and mopping at her nose and hugging herself, but at least she did not call on him. She seemed, in fact, to be deliberately avoiding him. “The Prioress’s Tale,” she was saying, raised the most interesting problems of anti-Semitism in Chaucer’s Middle Ages. The Jews of course had been driven out of England in 1290. Which meant that Chaucer was probably writing about Jews, and about anti-Semitism, from an accepted tradition rather than from any actual experience of his own. Did they see what this implied about the Christian worldview of that time? Somebody raised his hand to contribute. Anton turned and saw that it was Kevin Delaney, who said that he used to live in Bridgeport and he knew some Jewish kids there and they were just like anybody else; they weren’t like New York Jews at all. This got Miss Kelly all upset, though she pretended that he had made an interesting contribution, and then she tried to get them to talk about prejudices and stereotypes in their own lives. Everybody had something to say about this, and they all began to talk at the same time. Anton smiled to himself; they’d do anything rather than read Chaucer. Finally the bell rang and Miss Kelly thanked everyone for an interesting and profitable discussion. In three minutes he would be free.
But instead of just piling her books and papers while they waited for the final bell, Miss Kelly signaled him to the front of the room. She turned her back to the class and edged him around so that nobody would hear her. There was that interested silence. “You can talk quietly, class,” she said loudly, and when finally there was a whisper or two, she said, “I hope you found that discussion period helpful, Anton. You see, we all have strange notions about other people sometimes, and sometimes all of us feel that we are outsiders. Do you see? I hope you see that.”
Anton began to blush. What a fool the woman was. They were all looking at him, every one of them. He wanted to kill her; she was killing him. But he only stood there, his eyes lowered.
“I had a little talk with Mr. Hollister, you see.” She paused for a moment, but Anton said nothing. “Did you have a good talk with Mr. Hollister? Mr. Hollister is a very unusual man. He has the ability to care. He is a feeling person who feels for others. Mr. Hollister…”
She wasn’t talking to him. She was just talking.
Anton raised his eyes and stared at her. He was thinking he could say simply, “He doesn’t love you. He will never love you,” and she would die, right there, in front of the classroom.
Suddenly Miss Kelly stopped talking and looked at him. “What?” she said. “What is it?”
Anton said nothing.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” she said. “Stop that. You stop that right now.”
It seemed hours before the bell finally rang.
Anton braced his books under his left arm and walked across the footbridge without looking at the water on either side. There would be ice on the stream by now, at least along the edges. And there would be ice at the clay bank. He walked with purpose, but not too fast. He didn’t want the others to walk with him or to offer him a ride—not that anyone ever had. But he was careful just the same.
After a half mile, Anton turned off High Street onto Putnam Road and he was completely safe at last. He had a two-mile walk down Putnam, past the woods and the old mill and the clay bank, and then another half mile and he would be home. His mother would be in the kitchen, watching television and sipping her muscatel; his father would be out in the cabin working on Gorky. He would show her the bruises and cuts and she would console him, and at night he would lock his bedroom door and draw the things he had felt while she cradled him in her arms. And then he would fall asleep and dream of dying.
He broke a branch and used it as a walking stick. He was an old man taking little steps, propped up by a cane that bent beneath his weight. He walked this way up to the twenty-fifth tree. For the next twenty-five he walked like his mother. And for the next, like his father. He hugged himself, sniffing, and said, in Miss Kelly’s voice, “I had a little talk with Mr. Hollister today, Anton.” And then for a long time he walked like himself, thinking of Mr. Hollister and how he crossed his legs wrong, and of Miss Kelly. Both of them had seen him with his real face. It was getting harder to hide. He wanted to say real things. He wanted to refuse. But mostly he wanted not to be noticed. And now he was getting hair down there, and he would get big like all the others, and he would be like them in every way except inside, where he could be just himself, and terrified.
He thought of that picture of the old woman on a bridge, screaming. It was called The Scream, he thought. He saw the blackness of her open mouth, and he shaped his own mouth like hers, and in a moment he heard the long high wail coming and it would not stop. But finally it did stop. He was dizzy then and black spots sparkled behind his eyes, but he had done it and he felt good. And he had passed the old mill without looking at it once. In a minute he would be at the clay bank.
He rounded a turn in the road and there it was, a cliff of clay thirty or forty feet high, half of it chewed away by some huge machine so that you could see the layers and layers of red and brown and gold and blue gray. You could spend hours staring at it and never succeed in counting all the colors.
He would never paint in color until he could paint this, he thought. He would never risk it. But then what was he thinking, since he knew he would never paint at all.
There were ice patches here and there, and frozen chunks of clay, and some good patches of shale. Anton took off his mittens and quickly, expertly, slashed at the knuckles of each hand with a small slab of stone. The blood came slowly but he was patient and waited before slashing again. He did not want to go too deep.
And then, somewhere inside, he heard himself think, But what if I don’t die. “What if?” he said aloud, and at once he saw himself naked, walking down the school corridor. He was big and hard and he had hair down there. Miss Kelly and Mr. Hollister turned away from him in disgust, and the others all laughed at him, but he did not care. He walked through the corridor and out the front door and down the hill to the little footbridge. He looked back at the school, but nobody had followed him, nobody cared anymore. Without a pause, naked in the cold, he dove into the icy water and swam.
No, he could not let it happen that way. The old way was better. Death would happen if he just waited.
He looked down at his hand and saw that the blood had begun to flow nicely. He made a quick slash vertically across the back of it and then he was done.
On the edge of an ice puddle he found the right piece of frozen clay. It was a silver blue, the color and weight of steel, and it fitted his palm perfectly. He tossed it in his right hand a few times, got the feel of his fingers around it, and then gathered his books for the short walk home.
He thought of the picture he would draw tonight. A naked man, old, emaciated, tied to something—a dog, a horse, something dead—and out of his mouth small birds come flying.
And as he walked, making up his picture, he beat his right cheek with the frozen piece of clay. He beat it slowly, rhythmically, making the cold flesh swell a little, making the bruise settle into the skin. His cheek grew red and redder, veins surfacing slowly and breaking, preparing the flesh for the purple and black that would follow later.
Anton closed the kitchen door and stood there waiting for his mother to notice. But there was no need to wait; she seemed to have expected it.
“No, oh no,” she said, crying. “They’ve beaten you again, my poor Anton, my poor baby.” She held out her arms and he came to her. She cradled him in her lap, whispering over and over, “This is a terrible place, a terrible place. But Anton, my baby, Antosha, you’ve got your Mutti. You’ll always have your Mutti. Your Mutti loves you.”
He could smell the sweet wine on her breath and feel her strong arms around him and her soft breasts warming, protecting him. He abandoned himself to the luxury of her grief.